"The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography."
-- Oscar Wilde

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Saint Michael, by Luca Giordano (1663)

We
return to our look at some of the work by one of history’s most prolific
painters, Luca Giordano
(1634-1705).

During his
10 year period in Spain (1692-1702), Giordano carried out major decorative
commissions in Madrid, Toledo and the Escorial.
He grew to greatly admire the Spanish painter Velázquez, and painted A Homage to
Velázquez (circa 1692, now in the National Gallery London). Giordano had an incredible ability to mimic
the work of other artists, and for some time his Homage was attributed to Velázquez
himself. Indeed, after a trip to Venice
he painted an Annunciation (now in
the collection at the New York Metropolitan
Museum of Art) in the manner of Titian,
and Giordano’s ability as a mimic are clearly apparent.

Giordano was an incredibly active painter, prolific until the
end of his life, and is currently credited with some 2000 paintings. As such, some are quite wonderful and others,
less so. One of the great challenges
with prolific genius is to separate the great from the near-great from the
best-left-forgotten.

Giordano painted St.
Michael several times. One depiction,
dating roughly to 1660-65, clearly owes its inspiration to the painter Raphael; and while that is certainly a beautiful
picture (showing a profound understanding of the color blue), I much prefer the
one here, from 1663, as it owes its greatest debt to Giordano’s first master
and mentor, the painter Ribera.

St. Michael, along with Gabriel and Raphael, is one of only
three angels liturgically venerated by the Church. He appears twice in the Old Testament as a
helper to the early Christian peoples; he appears twice in the New Testament,
once first arguing Satan over Moses’ body, and again when he and his angels
fought Satan and his dragons and hurled him and his followers from heaven.

He appears repeatedly in apocryphal literature and was regarded
by the early Church as the captain of the heavenly host, the protector of Christians
against the devil (especially at the time of death, when the soul is most
vulnerable), and the leader of Christian armies against the heathen.

The cult of St. Michael started in Phrygia, but soon spread to
the West, where it gained traction when it was recorded that Michael appeared
at Mt. Garganus during the rein of Pope Gelasius. He is always depicted with a sword or lance,
and often standing over conquered devils and dragons. He is the ultimate conception of the warrior
angel in all his glamor and strength, valor and might.

Like much of Ribera’s work, there are hints of the dark,
brooding genius of Caravaggio, as well as the influence of Spanish and Venetian
masters. The work is heavily reliant on
the dramatic use of shadow, and a moody sense of coloration. The picture is both … unsettling and
startling; despite the heroic visitation of Michael, the overall image is
somewhat horrific.

The triumphant Michael is perhaps somewhat fleshy and feminine
to the contemporary eye, but the manly torso and powerful legs indicate the
strength of a warrior of Christ. The golden
tresses of the angel, along with the girlish face perhaps still owe something
to Raphael, as do the draping of his cape behind him.

Curious about the cape: its pinkish color reflecting the lights
of Hell seems as if the brighter, pinker side should be on the viewer’s right,
rather than the left. Also odd, too, is
that on Michael’s left hip (or on the right side, to the viewer) the
dragon-headed hilt of a sword is clearly visible, but the corresponding blade
seems no where in evidence behind the angel.

No, the real triumphs here are the wonderfully bestial devils
and the hellish landscape. The fingers of
our devils taper into wonderfully pointy fingernails, and the eyes register as
dead black. Also wonderful is the devil’s
cavernous mouth, which seems genuinely otherworldly with its snake-like note of
two teeth visible at the bottom. His
leathery, bat-like wings are in marked contrast to the feathery white clouds
provided for Michael. Curiously, the
spear of St. Michael pieces the side of the devil almost exactly where the
Roman spear pierced the side of the dying Christ.

The background has a sulfuric quality; one could almost choke on
the red and brown mists. Between the serpent
wrapped around one unfortunate’s arm, a howling beast and the foot of a plummeting
body, Giordano’s hell is truly a fearsome creation.

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James Abbott

James Abbott is a California-based writer and arts advocate. His online column The Jade Sphinx (http://thejadesphinx.blogspot.com/) champions the Fine Arts, featuring stories on such concepts as recognizable quality, artistic heritage and tradition, and techniques of the Great Masters.